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Trial Date Set for Ashley Walters Case Against Marilyn Manson

  According to Rolling Stone (which purposefully posted a photo of Manson from the last decade looking defeated), Ashley Walters, who was Marilyn Manson's personal assistant from 2010 to 2011, and whose case against him was revived upon appeal in December 2023, is now set to get a trial against her former boss, with a jury trial set to begin June 2, 2025. Apparently there was an attempt to resolve the case through mediation in December 2023, but according to Walters’ lawyer, James Vagnini, the parties were “not successful at resolving the case.” “We are happy that the delays are behind us and that we will have an opportunity to depose Mr. Warner and present all the facts to a jury next year,” Walters’ lawyer James Vagnini said in a statement to Rolling Stone . “We are confident they will acknowledge the harm done to Ms. Walters and deliver a resounding message to all survivors of such terrible abuse.” There has been no comment as of yet from Manson's team, but he has denied &q

Evan Rachel Wood Repeats the Lie She Was a Magician's Assistant ... Among Her Other Lies


Evan Interviewed on Live With Kelly and Mark

On November 4, 2022, Evan Rachel Wood appeared on Live With Kelly and Ryan to promote her role as Madonna in the movie Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. During this interview, she told a story that she was once a magician's assistant when she was 20 years old, and toured with this magician "for a bit" during which time she would be confined into a very small space to play the body parts of someone being sawed in half, and her head would also be removed. I wrote about this bizarre story at the time (see "Was Evan Rachel Wood Really a Magician's Assistant?"), after I determined that in fact Evan was never a magician's assistant who she supposedly toured with when she was 20, but instead what she did was replaced the story of her touring with Marilyn Manson when she was 20 with this fictional story.

On February 15, 2024, a little over one year after the above-mentioned appearance, Evan again went on what is now called Live With Kelly and Mark to promote her off-broadway debut as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, in which she plays the role of a domestically abused girlfriend who is also the love interest of a flower shop worker that nourishes a man-eating plant with human blood. During this interview, Evan was asked about the random jobs she had growing up, to which she replied by repeating that she was once a magician's assistant, and added that she was once a teacher of Taekwondo. To this she further added that during the pandemic she was taking life coaching courses and worked as a life coach for people, as well as currently she is studying interior design.
 
  
 
First of all, the truth is that Evan Rachel Wood never had "random jobs". To suggest that she did is ridiculous, seeing that she has been a famous and successful actress since before her teenage years and has consistently worked ever since.

Secondly, not only did she repeat the lie that she was a magician's assistant, which she went into more detail just over a year ago on this same show, showing how both the interviewers and interviewee lack authenticity, but this time she even slightly changes the story to say that she did it "just once", while on her last appearance she specifically said she toured with a magician "for a bit".

Thirdly, she never taught Taekwondo. I have written in the past how Evan once lied about competing in the Junior Olympics as a black belt in Taekwondo (see "Was Evan Rachel Wood Really in the Junior Olympics?"), but in this most recent interview Evan has now made up for the first time another lie regarding Taekwondo, saying that she once taught it as a random job. Evan has been talking about getting a black belt in Taekwondo since she was around 12 years old, and even by that time it was old news, because she likely got it in elementary school, just like a lot of kids used to get it in elementary school. But Evan takes such pride in this childhood accomplishment that she has been riding its wave for years, even at the age of 36, and has used it to make up even greater accomplishments for herself, such as when she said in 2013 that she was in the Junior Olympics, or when she ascribed her fighting skills on Westworld to her black belt, and now she has made up a new story that she was a teacher of Taekwondo.

Fourthly, it may be true that Evan took courses as a life coach during the pandemic, though I doubt it, what I find especially doubtful was that she worked as a life coach for people during the pandemic. During the pandemic, Evan was no doubt very busy with her advocacy for the Phoenix Act and the making of her documentary, let alone the time it took to forge an FBI letter and kidnap her child away from his father, but to suggest people were paying Evan, a famous actress, to coach them in their life choices sounds more and more ridiculous the more I try to fathom it.

It seems pretty clear that she makes up stories about random jobs to sound like a normal person, because she hates the fact that she grew up as a child actress and would have rather chosen to be a singer.
 
 
 
In the same interview, Evan talks about the significance of February 15th for her band Evan + Zane. Keep in mind, Evan was previously scheduled to do this show a few weeks prior, but because she was sick she rescheduled, and I have no doubt in my mind she is the one that chose February 15th to do the show, specifically so she could talk about her band and the significance of February 15th. For the past six years or so, Evan + Zane have been doing a live show on February 15th as an Anti-Valentine's Day show that focuses on covers of her favorite heartbreak songs. Because she is currently performing in Little Shop of Horrors, this year she can't do a February 15th show, so why not do a talk show on that day to talk about her celebration of being single and being heartbroken.

At one point in the interview, Evan is asked what her favorite romantic movie is, and she replies with The Notebook, but as a side note also adds the movie True Romance, which is interesting because both Marilyn Manson and Evan Rachel Wood have cited True Romance as a love story they wanted to aspire to together.

After this, Evan is asked what her favorite love song is, to which she replied: "Right now, I think my favorite one is Stephen Sanchez 'Until I Found You'. Look that one up, it's beautiful."



 
Evan Interviewed on ABC News

On February 17th, Evan was also interviewed on ABC News with her co-star Darren Criss about her off-broadway show. In this interview, the interviewer connects the fact that Evan is playing a role of someone suffering domestic violence while a domestic violence survivor herself, and what impact this brings to her performance. Evan had addressed this issue previously when she was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter on January 29th. Speaking of her role as Audrey in The Hollywood Reporter interview, she said:

"For me, it’s also hard not to relate to her and her struggles because, unfortunately, those are very timeless — poverty, abuse, patriarchy. She’s sort of a victim of all of those things.

Not to get too real for a second, but I am a domestic violence survivor playing this character who is going through similar struggles, who has these similar feelings and dreams of getting out and going to a better place and getting far, far away from her past. They’re all very real things, but they’re in this setting of campiness and horror. What’s amazing about the show for me is that it is fun. It is campy. There are man-eating plants. But there’s such sincerity to it as well. Especially with Audrey, Seymour and their relationship. There are so many beautiful, real moments between the two of them. Themes of poverty and capitalism are still just so prevalent that that’s why it’s so timeless, because these things just are not going away."

Now in this ABC News interview, the interviewer gets more specific, even comparing her role to what Evan talks about in Phoenix Rising. When asked how she was able to walk in Audrey's shoes with these themes of domestic abuse, Evan replies:

"There was of course that moment before I took the role thinking, like, is this going to be too triggering. Because we can sort of hide behind that veil of campiness and the comedy, it made it a little easier for me to go there. I can bring my personal experience to this and I do understand this character on a very deep level.... Her feelings of not feeling good enough, not feeling like she deserves anything better, those are all very very real things that abuse survivors experience, so the fact that they are, they were, able to capture it so accurately, you know, while also with like a spoonful of sugar."

As Evan has said in the past, rape is not funny, but if a rape joke is a good joke, then it is funny (see here). The same goes for jokes about men who abuse women (see here).
 
Personally, I think the man-eating plant would have probably been a better role for Evan to draw on her experience.
 
 

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